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Thailand Cancels Summit After Protests

A glass door shattered at one of the summit venues as protesters forced their way inside.Credit
Sukree Sukplang/Reuters

PATTAYA, Thailand — A summit meeting of Asian nations was abruptly canceled here on Saturday after hundreds of protesters forced their way past security forces into a convention center where leaders were preparing to discuss the global economic crisis.

About half of the leaders at the meeting were evacuated by helicopter, including those of Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines, Thai officials said. Some officials fled by boat.

Abhisit Vejjajiva, the embattled Thai prime minister who has faced a week of large-scale street demonstrations, declared a state of emergency to secure the departure of leaders from Southeast Asia, China, South Korea and Japan. The emergency decree was lifted once the leaders had safely left Pattaya, a resort town about 90 miles southeast of Bangkok, officials said.

The cancellation of the meeting, involving leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, was deeply embarrassing for Thailand and a missed opportunity for Asian leaders to discuss the severe economic downturn that is causing some of the region’s export-dependent economies to contract.

Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations; Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank; and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, were among those scheduled to attend the meeting over the weekend.

Photo

A member of the Thai government security watched the protesters approached. Credit
Wong Maye-E/Associated Press

The ability of protesters to breach security at a location relatively easy to protect — the venue is on a bluff overlooking the Gulf of Thailand and accessed only by two roads — raised questions about the functioning of the Thai government and its ability to manage its security forces.

The spokesman of the prime minister’s party, Thepthai Senpong, said Saturday that the “work of the police and the military did not meet expectations.”

Mr. Abhisit apologized for the cancellation of the meeting but did not take responsibility for the breach in security, which he said was “not the act of the government.”

Shouting “Abhisit get out! Abhisit get out!” protesters entered the compound in the early afternoon by pushing past the thousands of military and police personnel guarding the resort. Once inside, the demonstrators paraded through the hallways of the site, the Royal Cliff Beach Resort, chanting, cheering, blowing whistles and waving Thai flags.

Diplomats and other officials fled at the sound of shattering glass.

A small group of demonstrators reached the section of the complex where leaders of Asean were eating lunch. Videos showed protesters there being stopped at gunpoint by commandos and dropping to their knees.

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Supporters of ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra clashed with pro-government supporters near the location of the summit in Pattaya, Thailand.Credit
Sukree Sukplang/Reuters

Arisman Pongruengrong, one of the protest leaders, said the goal was to force the resignation of Mr. Abhisit, who took office in December.

In a measure of the animosity between the government and its opponents, Mr. Arisman said he had instructed his followers to “catch” the prime minister. “When you see him, catch him and do whatever you like to him,” he said.

The shutting down of the summit meeting was the latest bold gesture carried out by street demonstrators in Thailand. Royalist protesters, the archrivals of the group that raided the beach resort here, shut down Bangkok’s two airports late last year, severely damaging the economy and stranding hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors. Both groups have separately succeeded in blockading the prime minister’s office, the seat of government.

The subtext of the country’s political crisis is an ailing king and disagreements about the future of the monarchy, friction between opposition politicians and a powerful influential military and, not least, an ailing economy.

The country’s political crisis, now three years running, pits lower-income supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister ousted in a September 2006 coup, against the royalist elite that backed the coup.

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Pattaya is a resort town 90 miles southeast of Bangkok.Credit
The New York Times

The protesters who raided the venue on Saturday wore red, the color of backers of Mr. Thaksin, who since being convicted of abuse of power in a highly politicized trial last year has remained overseas.

Protesters said they were angered after being confronted early Saturday by pro-government demonstrators, and clashes ensued.

Mr. Arisman, a former member of Parliament and a onetime pop singer, displayed bullet casings that he said came from at attack by pro-government demonstrators. Two anti-government protesters were shot, and one of them died, he said.

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Suphachai Jaismut, the government’s deputy spokesman, denied that anyone had died and said that 13 people had been wounded in clashes, all of them government sympathizers.

The meeting might be rescheduled for later in the year, officials said. In addition to the 10 members of Asean, the meeting was to include Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

The prime ministers of China and Japan and the president of South Korea were in hotels several miles from the venue when the meeting was to begin. Protesters successfully blocked their paths on the way to the meeting. They allowed the leaders to be driven to a nearby airport once the meeting was canceled.

“If you compare it to a boxing match, we won the first round,” said Prasong Hassanoi, a 55-year-old cabdriver who is from northeastern Thailand who drove his taxi to the protest. “We are now more confident.”

Janesara Fugal contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Protesters Force Thailand To Cancel Asian Conference. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe